The Great Zamperini

Louie Zamperini was one of the great middle-distance runners of his time. In this excerpt from the new book Unbroken, the author of Seabiscuit captures Zamperini's glorious charge to the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

IN THE 1920s, the most notorious juvenile delinquent in Torrance, California, was a brawler, prankster, thief, and runaway named Louie Zamperini. But Louie's older brother, Pete, saw something else in Louie: extraordinary running talent. In 1932, when Louie was 15, Pete used his influence, and some strong-arming, to get Louie onto a track. With Pete as his coach, riding a bicycle behind him and swatting him with a stick as he trained, Louie became the fastest high-school miler in history. He hoped to make the 1936 Berlin Olympics in the 1500 meters, but as a teenager in an event dominated by men in their mid- to late 20s, he wasn't yet fast enough. Pete encouraged Louie to try 5000 meters, a distance at which Louie had never even trained. With just two weeks of preparation, Louie ran in an elite 5000-meter race against 26-year-old Norman Bright, America's second-fastest 5000-meter man. Badly impeded in the homestretch, Louie lost to Bright by a glimmer. After two more impressive 5000-meter performances, Louie was invited to the Olympic Trials in New York City.

ON THE NIGHT OF July 3, 1936, the residents of Torrance gathered to see Louie off to New York. They presented him with a wallet bulging with traveling money, a train ticket, new clothes, a shaving kit, and a suitcase emblazoned with the words TORRANCE TORNADO. Fearing that the suitcase made him look brash, Louie carried it out of view and covered the nickname with adhesive tape, then boarded his train. According to his diary, he spent the journey introducing himself to every pretty girl he saw, including a total of five between Chicago and Ohio.

When the train doors slid open in New York, Louie felt as if he were walking into an inferno. It was the hottest summer on record in America, and New York was one of the hardest-hit cities. In 1936, air-conditioning was a rarity, found only in a few theaters and department stores, so escape was nearly impossible. That week, which included the hottest three-day period in the nation's history, the heat would kill 3,000 Americans. In Manhattan, where it would reach 106 degrees, 40 people would die.

Louie and Norman Bright split the cost of a room at the Lincoln Hotel. Like all of the athletes, in spite of the heat, they had to train. Sweating profusely day and night, training in the sun, unable to sleep in stifling hotel rooms and YMCAs, lacking any appetite, virtually every athlete lost a huge amount of weight. By one estimate, no athlete dropped less than 10 pounds. One was so desperate for relief that he moved into an air-conditioned theater, buying tickets to movies and sleeping through every showing. Louie was as miserable as everyone else. Chronically dehydrated, he drank as much as he could; after an 880-meter run in 106-degree heat, he downed eight orangeades and a quart of beer. Each night, taking advantage of the cooler air, he walked six miles. His weight fell precipitously.

The prerace newspaper coverage riled him. Don Lash, Indiana University's legendary record-smashing machine, was considered unbeatable, having just taken the NCAA 5000-meter title for the third time, set a world record at two miles and an American record at 10,000 meters, and repeatedly thumped Bright, once by 150 yards. Bright was pegged for second, a series of other athletes for third through fifth. Louie wasn't mentioned. Like everyone else, Louie was daunted by Lash, but the first three runners would go to Berlin, and he believed he could be among them. "If I have any strength left from the heat," he wrote to Pete, "I'll beat Bright and give Lash the scare of his life."

On the night before the race, Louie lay sleepless in his sweltering hotel room. He was thinking about all the people who would be disappointed if he failed.

The next morning, Louie and Bright left the hotel together. The Trials were to be held at a new stadium on Randall's Island, in the confluence of the East and Harlem rivers. It was a hair short of 90 in the city, but when they got off the ferry, they found the stadium much hotter, probably far over 100 degrees. All over the track, athletes were keeling over and being carted off to hospitals. Louie sat waiting for his race, baking under a scalding sun that, he said, "made a wreck of me."

At last, they were told to line up. The gun cracked, the men rushed forward, and the race was on. Lash bounded to the lead, with Bright in close pursuit. Louie dropped back, and the field settled in for the grind.

On the other side of the continent, a throng of Torrancers crouched around the radio in the Zamperinis' house. They were in agonies. The start time for Louie's race had passed, but the radio announcer was lingering on the swimming trials. Pete was so frustrated that he considered putting his foot through the radio. At last, the announcer listed the positions of the 5000-meter runners, but didn't mention Louie. Unable to bear the tension, Louie's mother, Louise, fled to the kitchen, out of earshot.

The runners pushed through laps seven, eight, nine. Lash and Bright led the field. Louie hovered in the middle of the pack, waiting to make his move. The heat was suffocating. One runner dropped, and the others had to hurdle him. Another went down, and they jumped him, too. Louie could feel his feet cooking; the spikes on his shoes were conducting heat up from the track. Norman Bright's feet were burning badly. In terrible pain, he took a staggering step off the track, twisted his ankle, then lurched back on. The stumble seemed to finish him. He lost touch with Lash. When Louie and the rest of the pack came up to him, he had no resistance to offer. Still he ran on, the skin beginning to peel off the bottoms of his feet.

As the runners entered the final lap, Lash gave himself a breather, dropping just behind his Indiana teammate, Tom Deckard. Well behind him, Louie was ready to move. Angling into the backstretch, he accelerated. Lash's back drew closer, and then it was just a yard or two ahead. Looking at the bobbing head of the mighty Don Lash, Louie felt intimidated. For several strides, he hesitated. Then he saw the last curve ahead, and the sight slapped him awake. He opened up as fast as he could go.

Banking around the turn, Louie drew alongside Lash just as Lash shifted right to pass Deckard. Louie was carried three-wide, losing ground. Leaving Deckard behind, Louie and Lash ran side by side into the homestretch. With 100 yards to go, Louie held a slight lead. Lash, fighting furiously, stuck with him. Neither man had any more speed to give. Louie could see that he was maybe a hand's width ahead, and he wouldn't let it go.

With heads thrown back, legs pumping out of sync, Louie and Lash drove for the tape. With just a few yards remaining, Lash began inching up, drawing even. The two runners, legs rubbery with exhaustion, flung themselves past the judges in a finish so close, Louie later said, "you couldn't put a hair between us."

The announcer's voice echoed across the living room in Torrance. Zamperini, he said, had won.

Standing in the kitchen, Louise heard the crowd in the next room suddenly shout. Outside, car horns honked, the front door swung open, and neighbors gushed into the house. As a crush of hysterical Torrancers celebrated around her, Louise wept happy tears. Louie's father, Anthony, popped the cork on a bottle of wine and began filling glasses and singing out toasts, smiling, said one reveler, like a "jackass eating cactus." A moment later, Louie's voice came over the airwaves, calling a greeting to Torrance.

But the announcer was mistaken. The judges ruled that it was Lash, not Zamperini, who had won. Deckard had hung on for third. Later, the judges would review films and photos of the race and determine that Lash and Louie had tied for the victory. Louie Zamperini was on his way to Germany to compete in the Olympics in an event that he had only contested four times. He was the youngest distance runner to ever make the team.

ON JULY 24, 1936, the luxury steamship Manhattan arrived in Hamburg, Germany, bearing America's Olympic team. Having gorged himself on the ship's endless buffets, Louie had gained 12 pounds on the nine-day voyage, and did not expect to medal in Berlin. But it was not the weight he'd put on or the fitness he'd lost during the idle days at sea that daunted him; rather, it was the Finnish team he would be up against. Finland had long dominated the 5000 meters, winning gold in four of the five previous Olympics. Zamperini would be competing against Lauri Lehtinen, the 1932 champion, and his equally swift teammates, Gunnar Hockert and Ilmari Salminen. When Louie saw the Finns training, one reporter noted, "his eyes bulged."

ON AUGUST 4, three 5000-meter qualifying heats were run. Louie drew the third, deepest heat, facing Lehtinen. The top five in each heat would make the final. In the first, Lash ran third. In the second, Tom Deckard, the other American, failed to qualify. Louie slogged through heat three, feeling fat and leaden-legged. He barely caught fifth place at the line. He was, he wrote in his diary, "tired as hell." He had three days to prepare for the final.
While he was waiting, an envelope arrived from Pete. Inside were two playing cards, an ace and a joker. On the joker Pete had written, "Which are you going to be, the joker, which is another word for horse's ass, or the TOPS: Ace of spades. The best in the bunch. The highest in the deck. Take your choice!" On the ace he had written, "Let's see you storm through as the best in the deck. If the joker does not appeal to you, throw it away and keep this for good luck. Pete."

On August 7, Louie lay facedown in the infield of the Olympic stadium, readying himself for the 5000-meter final. One hundred thousand spectators ringed the track. Louie was terrified. He pressed his face to the grass, inhaling deeply, trying to settle his quivering nerves. When the time came, he rose, walked to the starting line, bowed forward, and waited. His paper number, 751, flapped against his chest.

At the sound of the gun, Louie's body, electric with nervous energy, wanted to bolt, but Louie made a conscious effort to relax, knowing how far he had to go. As the runners surged forward, he kept his stride short, letting the pacesetters untangle. Lash emerged with the lead, a troika of Finns just behind him. Louie floated left and settled into the second tier of runners.

The laps wound by. Lash kept leading, the Finns on his heels. Louie pushed along in the second group. He began breathing in a sickening odor. He looked around and realized that it was coming from a runner ahead of him, his hair a slick of reeking pomade. Feeling a swell of nausea, Louie slowed and slid out a bit, and the stench dissipated. Lash and the Finns were slipping out of reach, and Louie wanted to go with them, but his body felt sodden. As the clumps of men stretched and thinned into a long, broken thread, Louie sank through the field, to 12th. Only three stragglers trailed him.

Ahead, the Finns scuffed and sidled into Lash, roughing him up. Lash held his ground. But on the eighth lap, Salminen cocked his elbow and rammed it into Lash's chest. Lash folded abruptly, in evident pain. The Finns bounded away. They entered the 11th lap in a tight knot, looking to sweep the medals. Then, for an instant, they strayed too close to each other. Salminen's leg clipped that of Hockert. As Hockert stumbled, Salminen fell heavily to the track. He rose, dazed, and resumed running. His race, like Lash's, was lost.

Louie saw none of it. He passed the deflated Lash, but it meant little to him. He was tired. The Finns were small and distant, much too far away to catch. He found himself thinking of Pete, and of something that he had said as they had sat on their bed years earlier: A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain. Louie thought: Let go.

Nearing the finish line for the penultimate time, Louie fixed his eyes on the gleaming head of the pomaded competitor, who was many runners ahead. He began a dramatic acceleration. Around the turn and down the backstretch, Louie kicked, his legs reaching and pushing, his cleats biting the track, his speed dazzling. One by one, runners came up ahead and faded away behind. "All I had," Louie would say, "I gave it."

As Louie flew around the last bend, Hockert had already won, with Lehtinen behind him. Louie wasn't watching them. He was chasing the glossy head, still distant. He heard a gathering roar and realized that the crowd had caught sight of his rally and was shouting him on. Even Adolf Hitler, who had been contorting himself in concert with the athletes, was watching him. Louie ran on, Pete's words beating in his head, his whole body burning. The shining hair was far away, then nearer. Then it was so close that Louie again smelled the pomade. With the last of his strength, Louie threw himself over the line. He had made up 50 yards in the last lap and beaten his personal best time by more than eight seconds. His final time, 14:46.8, was by far the fastest 5000 run by any American in 1936, almost 12 seconds faster than Lash's best for the year. He had just missed seventh place.

As Louie bent, gasping, over his spent legs, he marveled at the kick that he had forced from his body. It had felt very, very fast. Two coaches hurried up, gaping at their stopwatches, on which they had clocked his final lap. Both watches showed precisely the same time.

In distance running in the 1930s, it was exceptionally rare for a man to run a last lap in one minute. This held even in the comparatively short hop of a mile: In the three fastest miles ever run, the winner's final lap had been clocked at 61.2, 58.9, and 59.1 seconds, respectively. No lap in those three historic performances had been faster than 58.9. In the 5000, well over three miles, turning a final lap in less than 70 seconds was a monumental feat. In his record-breaking 1932 Olympic 5000, Lehtinen had spun his final lap in 69.2 seconds.

Louie had run his last lap in 56 seconds.

AFTER CLEANING himself up, Louie climbed into the stands. Nearby, Hitler sat in his box, among his entourage. Someone pointed out a cadaverous man near Hitler and told Louie that it was Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda. Louie had never heard of him. Pulling out his camera, he carried it to Goebbels and asked him if he'd snap a picture of the fuhrer. Goebbels asked him his name and event, then took the camera, moved away, snapped a photo, spoke with Hitler, returned, and told Louie that the fuhrer wanted to see him.

Louie was led into the fuhrer's section. Hitler bent from his box, smiled, and offered his hand. Louie, standing below, had to reach far up. Their fingers barely touched. Hitler spoke in German. An interpreter translated.

"Ah, you're the boy with the fast finish."

Excerpted from Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand. Copyright 2010 by Laura Hillenbrand. Published by arrangement with Random House, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

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